1. Greatness

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Hello and welcome to the first episode of The Rest is History and you podcast about all things historical. I'm Dominic Sandbrook and my sidekick because I like to refer to him, although he would no doubt refer to himself as my puppet master, his opposite me and it's Mr Tom Holland. Hello Tom. Thank you very much Dominic, and I'm Bivalent introduction that was lovely to be here. You're looking forward to the podcast, done a podcast before? I've never done a podcast before, I've been on lots but I've never actually done a podcast. But since everybody else in Britain is doing one, I thought that not one like this though, not one like this. No, not one like this. This is going to be something completely and radically new. Well that remains to be seen, Tom credentials. Historian of the ancient world, early Middle Ages, I've just written a book Dominion which goes from 480 BC, right the way up to the present day, history of Christianity called Dominion, available in all good bookshops. Very good book, even if I say so myself, a very good book Tom. And I write about modern Britain mainly, a little bit in America, but mainly modern Britain, so I've written a series of books about Britain since the 1950s and the most recent one is called Who There's Wins and it's all about Margaret Thatcher in the 80s and Juran Juran and Spandoff Ballet in the Falklands war and everything you would ever want to know. So I'm batting for the ancient Romans, Dominic is batting for Juran Juran, we've covering all the bases there I like to think. So essentially we can cover almost anything and that of course is a great joy of podcasts and Dominic, what do you want to talk about today? Well I think we should start as we mean to go on and I think we should start with greatness who is great? What is it? And why aren't people great anymore? So Tom, as a great man yourself, throw some great figures from history at me. Well the biggie of course is Alexander the great, well you see I think what's interesting is that the idea of somebody being great isn't actually a kind of a natural thing. It's something that's that's bread of very specific cultural circumstances. And the idea that somebody can be great is originally a person idea. The great king is it? The great king. So he's the king of the kings, he's the great king, that's how he's known. So the king of Persia was superior to. Because the Persian Empire is the greatest empire that anyone had ever seen and I just say, increasingly think that basically everything goes back to Persia ultimately, everything kind of you know, you follow people in Iran. Well you follow things too and it always goes back to Persia. And so the king of Persia is the great king and then Alexander the third of Macedon conquers the Persian empire. So he then becomes the great king. So this is what the fourth century be seen. So he dies and his empire splits up and there are, his various generals kind of scavenge over it like a pack of hyenas. And they all want to be like Alexander. And there's one king in particular who called Antiochus, who goes back into Persia, tries to reconcred and he adopts the name of great, it seems. So he's calling himself the great king. So there's a hint there that this is where it begins. But then what actually happens is that it's the Romans who pick up on it. So the first reference to Alexander is in the mid third century and they. And they're calling him Alexander Magnus, Alexander the great. So basically what I'm saying is that the idea of greatness comes from ancient history. Yeah. So basically that's mine. But you've caused your modern historian. So I mean, basically you don't have great people. No, not really. So I obviously, I do my research for this book. So I looked at the Wikipedia list of people. Wow. I found another website which I'm rustling my paper to prove that I've done my research. Another website which begins with the word history has produced at least 38 great people. 38. At least 38. Right. There could be some more out there. 43. Wait until you capture it. No. But anyway, let's go back to the Wikipedia because Wikipedia is obviously the one thing that people will look at. So what's the most recent? So I think the most recent is the Emperor Magi of Japan, he dies in 1912. So he's the guy who opens up Japan to the West. He modernizes Japan and sort of pushes it into the 20th century, if you like. But everybody before that. So the last people that we think of as great, kind of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Catherine the Great. So we're talking at the beginning of the 18th century, then we've got the Enlightened Desperate. So I mean, I found that excruciatingly boring actually went into them frail level, Catherine the Great, Frederick the Great, people who modernize Russia and Prussia and these sort of central European monarchy, but who is, who is, but aside, nobody, who's deciding that they're great. I mean, is there a kind of selection committee like the Nobel Prize, I think it's, it emerges from the sort of immediate historiography. So it's a kind of creation of Victorian writers. And I think greatness in this, when we talk about people being great, I think a lot of it is to do with sort of nation building, state builders. And I think it's the thing that Victorians did, I mean, as you know, the Victorians or 19th century nationalist generally were all about finding historical roots of nation states and arguing that, you know, they were sort of delved back into the archives to prove that a given nation had sort of been born unsullied and pure at the dawn of history. And I think they looked for founding fathers and they were generally far, I mean, they're called Catherine the Great, I suppose, but by and large, their men, their warriors, who've welded their people into this sort of mighty realm, modernised it or something like that. But it's, so in which case, why is George Washington not George the Great? Because he's a found, I mean, he's the essence of a founding father. Well, this is the thing, isn't it? Is it because it's a republic? Well, you could go with the, I mean, you can't have great men in republics. No, you do have great men in it. And to just concentrate on America for a second, they don't use that terminology, but they do use the terminology, the founding fathers. And they have, you know, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Monuments, they have all these kind of, you know, you can go to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's house and kind of do homage to the great man. Yeah, but I think the fact that they're not, it's not Abraham the Great, it's not George the Great. I think that that does suggest that there is an issue with in republics, maybe democracies with, with, with the idea of, you know, well, I definitely calling someone great. I absolutely think you're right for that. So he's all monarchs. So I think, is there anyone who's called, who, who is, who's, who's, who's called great, who's not a monarch? I mean, Pompey the Great, I guess. There are some girls and bishops. I mean, we're going back to the Wikipedia, there's a bit, basically, they're all monarchs. So yeah, you, I think almost by, isn't it true that by definition in a democracy, you can't have a the great because an awful lot of people, often, I'm actually a majority, well-evoted for other candidates, they well-evoted against them. But also it's an effect, isn't it that it's an offence against the very idea of democratic? Yes. The kind of implicit egalitarianism of our society. a republic or a democracy, the idea that there are great people, great men, who put democracies in their shadow, is seen as being threat to democracies, do have that, don't they? So he's. Yeah, but they don't call them great. What about Mustafa Kemal at a Turk, father Turk, the founder of modern Turkey? So there's a man, I mean, effectively, I mean, he is, you know. Yeah, but he's another kind of founding father who's sticking it all together. Yeah. He's. so there are some 20th century examples, I mean, I don't know, in Ireland, is Aiman de Valera. He's not Aiman the Great, is he? I mean, it's. No. And I think also, the other thing is, so. The idea of great men. Yeah. It's an ordinary man, aren't they? Yeah, of great men as the people who power history forwards. That's a very kind of. That's Thomas Kalaal, the great, because Victoria's main history, who is very, very kind of keen on that idea. And that, then, Kalaal was one of Hitler's favourite forwards. I mean, so Hitler in the bunker is, I think, I'm right in saying, has Kalaal's biography of Frederick the Great, who is seen as great, because it looks as though Prussia is going to be crushed by all the enemies that are massing around it, and Frederick riggles free and lives to do another day. And you know what? And when Roosevelt died, just before the end of the Second War, Roosevelt died. Goebbels and Hitler have this conversation in the bunker where they say, "This is just what happened to Frederick the Great and history is repeating itself." His enemies died just when he was going to be beaten, and we are just like Frederick the Great, and we are going to wriggle free. So you're right. You're right. There's a sort of shadow hanging over. So Frederick, the King of Prussia in the 18th century, who essentially raises Prussia up from being a kind of Hicksville backward, no hope of a power, to be one of the great powers of Europe and kind of essentially the stepping stone to what becomes the United Germany in the 19th century. So yeah, anything that is into, obviously, is bad, becomes problematic, but it is mildly. So all classical music. Well, so the sense that the fascists identified with that idea of greatness. But lots of people identify with greatness, don't they? First of all, all children reading history books identify with the idea of greatness, because they see themselves as the Great. Only if it's safely in the past. So it's safe to read about Alfred the Great, because-- But not about. But-- All parts of the Great. No, well, yeah. Well, Mao the Great was Stalin the Great. Well, here's a big history. Because obviously, if you're a fascist, then you believe in Great Men, shaping destiny. So it's fine for Hitler and Mussolini to broadcast themselves as being great. Stalin and Mao are just as influential figures, but they see themselves as the expression of the will of the people. And so, even though Mao is the Great Helmsman or whatever, you can't talk in that sense of greatness that is associated with monarchs. Because-- I don't buy that at all. I think you do talk about that with them. You don't buy Stalin being great. Stalin the Great. Whereas Hitler, I think, would-- But I think Stalin would have been-- But Stalin's iconography was all about Stalin as a great man. I mean, the images of him, the father of his people, just like Hitler, he would get love letters from ordinary Russian women. He would, you know, he was sort of projected as this colossus larger than life supremely wise and great military leader like this sort of-- Yes. But officially, Stalin is the expression of the will of the people. That's what he's about. Marxism is founded on the idea that individual's great people are just kind of surface froth. But that what matters are the great tides of economic history of class warfare. That is really what determines history. And so any notion that great individuals shape history is a delusion. And of course, I mean, there are all kinds of paradoxes from Stalin's primacy. But I think that ideologically, there's a problem for communists with talking about great people. But they always have a way. They always have it. I mean, we've all seen those red square parades where they have-- Yeah. You know, that's the idea of-- Well, let me literally mummified like a Pharaoh. Right, exactly. I agree. There are paradoxes. But officially-- Yeah. So Lenin's body, mummified right now in Red Square, you know, if it weren't for COVID, we could go and be doing this live from Lenin's tomb. That's Alexander the Great again, all over again, isn't it? His body was kidnapped after he died and taken to Alexandria as a sort of badge of authenticity for the Ptolemies, the dynasty that took over Egypt, which is basically what Lenin's successors did with his body. Yes. So all you're missing there is the words the Great. Yes. But I think-- I mean, everybody else is the same. I think what it suggests is that there is a kind of inherent desire on humans to kind of acknowledge-- Yeah. --and indeed-- To kind of frustrate yourself-- Yeah. --before the idea of greatness. Great thing. But that in the modern world is in conflict with-- The two of us. --a relativist. --to express it. And that's part of republics, it's part of democracies, it's-- and it's definitely part of communist states. But what's so interesting is that-- so in the modern world, the people who believe in greatness tend to be, should we say, harder core than people who don't. But even sort of the almost, you know, high-minded sort of, I don't know, guardian reading vegan, believes implicitly in greatness, don't they? Because you have-- I mean, to question-- Well. --I mean, Nelson Mandela. Yeah. --is he not great? He's an inspirational figure who transcended his times and-- Yes. Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King's day in America. Yes. OK. And that is a kind of different expression of what greatness is, and that, I guess, would be moral greatness. There's not just moral greatness, is it? It's surfing the tide of history. It's-- you know, he was on the side of history into the arc of justice. Yeah. The arc of justice. The arc of justice. That's it. The arc of Obama will be in that sort of box one day, won't it? Yeah. I guess that there is a kind of quality of difference there, because Mandela is seen as being great, because he's seen as morally great, the same with Martin Luther King. Yes. And Gandhi. And it's not greatness in the kind of Alexander mold of-- But if you were a child, you would, you know, a thousand years ago or something. Would you not grow-- and you were sort of noble parents or something, and you were grown up being taught by a monk? And you'd be taught that these great figures were people to emulate, that they had moral qualities, as well as purely martial ones, that Alexander had courage in them. Well, I think that's interesting, because actually a thousand years ago, if you're in Europe, you would have a very Christian perspective on this. And I think there is a deep ambivalence in monasteries, for instance, about kings. Yeah. Alfred is-- there are hints in the sources that there were monks who-- felt that Alfred was perhaps a little bit too pushy. But equally, there are-- you know, part of why monks subsequently are able to enshrine Alfred as great is, because he's seen as having been a great patron of the church. But there is a Christian ambivalence towards figures like Alexander, who are pagan, who are definitely seen as being steeped in blood. The idea that martial greatness is the definition of greatness. I think he's the kind of legacy of the kind of ambivalent Christian attitudes towards greatness that we've inherited. So here's somebody who was definitely inspired by martial greatness, Churchill. Right. So Churchill's really-- Now, Churchill, we could do a billion podcasts about Churchill and not exhaust the sort of-- the stuff to be said, or the public enthusiasm. Is he great? I mean, I would say-- actually, flawed, but-- I mean, everybody's focused for all human. I would say yes. I would say it's ludicrous to say he's not a great figure who has become an icon, who's become a symbol of the nation, who-- and actually all the flaws are part of greatness, because all everybody we've talked about has been flawed. Do you think Churchill was great? Yeah, so I think that Churchill-- well, the kind of way that people have been reacting to Churchill recently-- highlights the way in which the meaning of great has evolved, I think. So I think Churchill is great in the classical sense of it. He is a great man who, in an hour of crisis, saves his country. That's something very Greek, isn't it? Yeah, so in that sense, he is great because, although he is personally flawed, those flaws actually only serve to emphasize the scale of his achievement in rallying and saving his country and indeed much more by that. Well, people bought that at the time, didn't they? Yeah, absolutely. In the 1940s. Yeah, absolutely. So he is the British lion personified. I think that one of the reasons why his statue keeps getting attacked now is that the sense of greatness has evolved and become what we were saying-- well, I was saying about Mandela or Martin Luther King-- that greatness you have to be morally great. And I think that there is a feeling that Churchill on that measurement of greatness doesn't quite mention. Well, you're honest because he has racist views. You mentioned the arc of history. He's seen as somebody who's on the wrong side of a lot of-- Yes. I mean, even by the sense of the time, he was a huge reactionary. Yeah. But in a way, the fact that people are sort of daubing racist on his statue is proof of greatness because if he weren't great, I mean, Who would care? You know, if he was some sort of middle ranking. - Well, I think that's a kind of, it's an attack not just on Churchill, but on an understanding of greatness that is now very, very contested. - Yes. - And I think that also it kind of blurs in with the fact that the main island in the UK is called Great Britain. (laughing) Obviously it has nothing to do with the fact that Britain objectively is great. - Which is the fact that the island of Britain is bigger than Little Britain, which is Brittany. - Yeah. - So that's why it's Great Britain. It's an expression of geographical size. - But I think that obviously over the Britain's imperial heyday, there was a tendency to say, yeah, we're great. - So it's a normative determinism, yes. - And I think that that, you know, that Churchill is the kind of archetypal poster boy for that idea of Britain being great. - Yes. - And so I think that also is something that is being attacked. Because part of, I suppose of what's in the back of the minds of people who see Churchill as a problematic emblem for Britain, is the sense that his model of greatness is something that is essentially to be rejected, that it's militarist, that it's supremacist, that it's-- - But all great. - With all the people we've talked about. - Yeah, well, fit into that. - With exception of Nelson Mandela and-- - But again, it feeds into the idea that we're talking about a model of greatness and idea of greatness that feels old fashioned. - Does it feel old fashioned, though? I mean-- - Yeah, I think so. - If your, you know, Chinese, Xi Jinping is, I mean, will he not be great one day? - Yeah, but again, but again, this is the communist thing that he can't be enshrined as a great man, saying the way that the emperor was or the first emperor. - Yeah. - You know, I mean, China, obviously, has always had a kind of sense of the great man because it's born with it. The first emperor is seen as, you know, very much in the style that we've been talking about as the guy who creates a state, who fashions an empire, who fashions an order. And that inheritance runs the right the way down to the abolition of the figure of the emperor in the early 20th century. But, and obviously Mao and all the, you know, Deng Xiaoping and Mao, there is a sense in which the figure of the emperor is someone who's absent, you know, that it's kind of like losing a limb or something. But China is officially a communist state. And so I think, ideologically, there isn't a place for greatness in that kind of Thomas Carlisle. - I think that's right. I think there is a place. Like a helmsman Mao, all those people, you know, waving their little red books. - Yes, but there is a tension there. They can't, the Chinese cannot celebrate Mao as great in the way that the fashions celebrate Hitler is great. - It's odd, isn't it? - Or even, I mean, I don't think that you would get a Chinese general secretary, for instance, behaving in the way that Trump behaved when he returned from his COVID. - I think his mask off and, I mean, all of those, you know, that was, whatever you think of it. - That, I mean, Putin would behave that way. - Putin actually would take his top off. - Putin absolutely would. - Yeah, and actually the fact that Churchill, that Churchill, Jesus Christ, brought a terrible slip, Trump drove his slip there. Oh, I never looked at that. The fact that Trump does behave in that way, and obviously his make America great again stuff, actually shows you just how deeply the concept of greatness is embedded in the American political psyche. - The whole iconography of the presidency, actually, is all the great man kind of stuff. - Yeah, but that's kind of feeds back to what we were talking about, you know, about, you know, the relationship between Rome and America. I think that there is a huge part of what makes many, many Americans very, very uncomfortable about Trump, is the sense that he is pushing the model of greatness too far. - So, doesn't it? You know, when I was doing my PhD in history, the idea that I'd be doing a podcast about greatness would have been anathema because the very idea of greatness, to sort of academic historians, is complete nonsense and, you know, unthinkable and not worth giving us room to. And we would, you know, have these sort of seminars where if somebody would say X is great, everyone would kind of scoff, but then we'd go to the pub and have this big debate about who was greater, Pele or Maradona or whatever. So the idea of greatness. - Well, sport it, yes, because in sport you can measure it. - You can't measure it, though, can you? You can't measure. - Mahamed Ali, of course, famously said, "I am the greatest." He basically created his own myth, which all great men and women do, to some extent, didn't? - But part of the appeal of sport is that it provides a stage on which these, you know, the desire for hero worship can be channeled safely. - Yeah. - But that's, I mean, history is no different. - Surely. - No, because I think that history suggests that giving a stage to people who see themselves as great in who are seen by other people is great can threaten disaster if you live in a democracy or a republic. - So I think if we went into the water stands now to the children's section to the history section, I mean, they have the horrible histories, but it is all, you know, inspiring girls, wonderful girls or whatever, those kind of books, you know, the ones I mean. And it's Amelia Earhart, Mary Curie, Agatha Christie, Rosa Parks, I mean, Rosa Parks is somebody who's clearly conceived by lots of people as great, as a great figure. - I don't think the word great is adequate though. I think, I don't think that's, I don't think the model of greatness as it's traditionally understood. - She has the moral qualities that allowed her to, be on the right side of history to transcend her time, to lead her people to be the vessel for something bigger than herself. - But again, this goes back to the sense in which, you know, if we are going to talk about people like that as being great, it's because we're talking about moral greatness. - Can you, I mean, you're basically saying, there was moral greatness and then moral greatness. But I think the two have always been, - I think, I think it's because we're uncomfortable with the word saint. But I think that that's actually, that actually someone like, like Mandela or Martin Luther, because we would otherwise have called them a saint. - Yeah, the emotions that they inspire are the emotions that traditionally saints have inspired. - Yeah, that's very true. - So they're kind of secular saints. - A biser. - Yeah. - But that's like, I think it's different. - People visit their shrines, they get relics, they-- - Yeah, but also they're seen as morally inspirational and that if you behave like them, then you will make the world a better place. I think that that's a key part of it. Whereas if you behave like Frederick the Great, you're going to end up in the bunker in the Berlin thing. - That's obvious. (laughing) - And I think that's not the fate I'm on for myself. - No, no. So I think that, I think it's kind of the ambivalent attitude to, well obviously I think everything comes down to Christianity, but I think in the West, it's, we remain sufficiently Christian that we're uncomfortable with the idea of great men. - Yeah. - Because we recognize that there is an aspect of that greatness that is kind of pagan almost, that it's a kind of classical ideal that morally we're uncomfortable with. But we're insufficiently Christian that we're happy now to talk about sayings. - All right then Tom, you need to pick three people. Now who you think are great and they've got to be alive right now, maybe they can be yourself. - Why have I got to? Because I don't, (laughing) - Well I think it's really just I'm always a little foolish. (laughing) - I, you see, I don't think that this is an age where people are great. - I tell you who would disagree with you, Boris Johnson, he believes in greatness. - Do you think one day people will call him Boris the great or Boris the fat? - Boris the fat, I think. - Boris, Boris not as fat as he was. - No, no, no. - So Boris, I mean he's a, yeah, and Trump obviously, I mean, I think-- - Yeah, Donald the great. - Yeah, I think that there's a kind of-- - With that actually. - Maybe a definition of a populist leader is that he would like to think of himself as being called the great in history book. - No, I don't agree with that. - No, I don't agree. Yeah, so by that measure, I don't think any of the-- - But I'll tell you someone who I think may be remembered as the great and called the great would be Putin, who we've talked about. - Yeah, I think the reason for that is I think that Putin is creating his own reality. - Yeah. - Putin is creating a kind of model of Russian history in which great men do step forward and follow in the footsteps of the great leaders who came before, so not Stalin, but Catherine the Great and Peter the Great, and Peter the Great particularly. And so I think Catherine the Great reconquests the Crimea. - It's Putin's done. - It's Putin's done. So I can imagine that Vladimir the Great. - Yeah, I can beat you by that. I think I'm not a Vladimir Putin fan, but clearly, let's say he does another 10 years, then he goes and people say he's transformed his country, he's made it strong and respected on the world stage. By the way, blah, blah. And Russians will sort of bow down before his image for decades to come. - Well, I think that it will be, he'll be called the Great, if anyone's gonna be called the Great, I think he'll be called the Great in Russia. I mean, I don't imagine he'd be called it in not in Poland or Germany. Anyway, you said three. I mean, do you have three? - Well, that was a bluff, you see. (laughing) Well, you were talking about saints. I mean, St. Barack, I think on Michelle, they'll be saints when they'll be children's books about them, but they probably are right now. British politicians know, and actually we could. - But the British stage is too small. - It's too small to dispute it, isn't it? to disputatious appletical culture now, for anybody to agree on a single figure. I mean, Macron clearly has aspirations to be. - Right, and so Napoleon is, I guess, in a sense, the archetype of the great man who's shadow hangs over the whole of the 19th century. And so every French, great French leader has that. So to goal, you would say it was great. The goalist. - But he's so nice. - France is great, to goal is great. And Macron is clearly part of that tradition. - But actually, the one person we haven't talked about, probably the most powerful and respected leader, certainly the most respected leader I would say in the Western world is Angela Merkel. - Yeah. - Angela the great. - Journalists don't do greatness now, do they? - No, because the whole point of Merkel is that she's kind of anonymous. I mean, that's my neighbor. - And one greatness is her calling card, isn't it? - Yeah, kind of great competence is what she's all about. - She's the German John Major. - Well, except that the one time where she didn't take a kind of grade, say of course, was where she opened borders. - And that's the lack of history again, isn't it? - That is the same. - Yes, so yeah. And so she very much saw that, I think. - Yeah, same to Angela the great. - So she has a claim on that meaning of the word great, but not in any sense a claim on the kind of Frederick the great model, greatness, because that's the whole point of that. - She will never have a whole point of that. - And the whole point of the model of Germany is that it's a rejection of that tradition. - So on that happy note, thank you, Tom. - And thank you for listening. I'm sure we've provoked some thoughts, and we'd be very glad to hear your opinions, particularly if they're attacking Tom. - And. - Oh, Dominic, at least I just can get that in. - We'll be back next time. Goodbye. (upbeat music) - Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.